Chypre: Les territoires fendus d’Aphrodite

Abstract

Cyprus is an emblematic space of relations and rivalries between people, between myth and history, between causality and stereotype: cradle of Aphrodite-Kypris, the goddess who gave her name to the island; ancient economic power of the Mediterranean owing its prosperity to the exportation of copper; nowadays a remote member of the European Union, which territory is divided by the ‘Green line’; militarily occupied in the North by Turkey and spotted with British sovereign bases in the South; more recently a potential producer of natural gas, the island has always attracted –distorting– looks on this strategic gate to a Near East presently seething with unrest.

Key Words 

Cyprus, myth, stereotype, cartography, geopolitics